BackStory; The Civil War in the 21st Century: A New Museum Marks an Old Conflict

major funding for baxter is provided by the anonymous donor the national endowment for the humanities and the robert and joseph cornell memorial foundation this is next well the back story the show explains the history behind today's headlines amazing connelly i'm jo ann friedman and i'm in tears if you're new podcast where historians and each week along with her co host brian balogh we explore the history of a topic that's been in the news normally this is when we take you back to a moment in history but this week or talk about something is happening right now and may fourth the brand new american civil war museum in richmond virginia opens to the public full disclosure i should add that i'm the founding chairman of the museum's board a merger of several historic sites including the former museum of the confederacy the american civil war museum is hoping to present a new narrative of the conflict that's diverse inclusive and balance this painting is known as the

last meeting of julian jackson that's kathy wright she's a curator at the american civil war museum and a former curator at the museum of the confederacy she's built a backstory producer listed as monday at the museum what we're seeing are robert e lee and stonewall jackson and two of the most revered confederate military commanders on horseback meeting before the battle chancellor still and this is the ballad which jackson would be mortally wounded prince of this painting remained and are owned by many white southerners in the post war period so this is a very recognizable image too many people kathy says the painting which is twelve feet high and eight feet wide as one of the largest items in the museum's collection which can make it hard to cure it dominates the space and we wanted to provide some balance to the museum him to do that by displaying the painting alongside text of the thirteenth fourteenth and fifteen the members of the constitution they also shows are displayed alongside a carefully curated image on the wall

immediately facing the painting is a very large colorized photograph of african american legislators from virginia in the teens seventies these men are shown a larger than life size as a group of each man hand it's really striking to to see that that photo in color at that scale and i think really helps to helps to bring together a lot of the themes which were trying to cover him in the space we'll hear more from melissa's toward the museum's exhibits with kathie lee although the civil war ended more than a hundred and fifty years ago that iconography history and message are invoked almost daily and events like the two thousand fifteen massacre at the historic emanuel ame church in charleston and two thousand seventeen unite the right rally in charlottesville has sparked a debate about how the war should be represented in public spaces so on

this episode we're giving you an exclusive behind the scenes look at the american civil war museum in richmond we'll bring you a feature conversation i had with christy coleman museums director says she's no stranger to controversy and she believes that museums have the power to change the world and we look at the gift shop and as soon as you negotiate with politics a civil war christie coleman is one of the most extraordinary museum curators in the country as an african american woman past which creating a new museum of the civil war she lose vision and diplomatic skills are plenty and she told him she had a very early very visceral immersion in southern history at all in the winter their colonial williamsburg as a summer job as a character interpreter is what they were called

yeah and it was betraying a person of the past her name was rebecca she was enslaved young woman out my asian women had to create find somebody for me and see you was the property of jungle a year and the premise behind her story was that he was sick and dying and that was creating anxiety because young rebecca didn't know what was going to happen to her if you don't well that's pretty heavy debuts an acting role i did it was it was so i did the summers when away worked at the museum came back to cali waves park and eventually became director after american interpretations and present issues and one of the first actions in that role was the decision to reenact an estate sale which included the sale of sleigh and that's the first time

i was thrust into the public and the public relations in media spotlight you know can whisper decided that i should be the face of this thing that was very controversial at the outset but it seems that some ways you know you got people won't understand why there should be a helpful absolutely i mean it was it an extraordinarily important moment even though there was so much anxiety going into it lots of controversy people felt this was an appropriate to do in a museum setting a particular clan wings or whatever but what i did in the end the post days of that is that i received letters from academics around the nation and around the world rally other museum colleagues particularly those at historic houses and plantation sites contacted me and said if they can do that we at

least need to have an honest conversation about the enslaved population set our sights and so that began what i think was sort of the birth of us finally knowing the stories about endings and the other three hundred plus people that were my cello and then learning about three hundred plus people that were mount vernon and so forth so i mean that was the moment and the nineteen ninety four and his ridiculous rate you know twenty five years ago but that was the moment there are many topics american history that are still as contentious as the sub or so were the issues that christie her staff faced creating to a situation we had to completely reimagine the meaning of the wall where to start there and then from that it's like okay well if you're imagining the meaning of it why it matters and contemporary life and that means you really have to examine it the way that people live so we don't say ok well how did

they live in an unsettled they lived in constant hey yes there was always changing tree says there was never knowing what was going to happen around the next corner there was this period for some of is this my moment is freedom coming for others there was just the basic question of where should my allegiance law and we also quickly realize that this conflict impact a native nations well it wasn't a global crisis had global impact because of the traits we acknowledge that if we're thinking about this is constant chaos and death and destruction on a scale that had never been seen before that you're also dealing with trauma it is a high emotion thing so how you tell that story in an impactful way and so it meant to me that it could no longer be a story that was just fixated on the military and the political and it had two intertwine again

the way that people lived it and so that meant there was this constant flow of impact something that's happening in in society is going into effect a military action something that the public politicians do is going to end up impacting what happens on the battlefield but the community is is railing against all rallying for its gonna impact political action so all of these factors are constantly employee and people are changing their minds constantly about their support for the war or its gains and so forth so creating that kind of fractures environment actually became sort of a visual vernacular for us so many ways what you're trying to do is tell the story both on a global and a personal sale at the same time bernanke songs stories of military history in political history or weekend together and the stories of abandonment and death death on the battlefield and of

homesickness and a political conflict right so how is the museum the place that that story can be told in a way can be told anyone else well every time at pew research center does a study on trust institutions museums always ranked number two behind my prayer which means that's a tremendous amount of power and importance to halt communities navigate around and i mean i tell people all the time history has never ever been for the dead it is about our lived experiences about our environment and some museums have that capacity through its collections through its storytelling strength to help people make sense of the past and make that usable and because we use a variety of learning techniques whether it is you know the text on the wall it can never be too much whether is the visual image that has an emotional impact whether it is the art of fact there's something about the real thing that people really only do we have a

ton of a real thing you know that when they see it it brings even more troops and i think that those sort of that center that vision that understanding is what helps us be successful and has enabled us to really reexamine every single program an event that we'd done through that lens so what is the building like what what are its priorities well you know the priorities certainly was be mindful of that historic fabric of the side there are regional buildings here and there were hand the straw artifacts are buried in the ground to me we have tunnels and canals of all kinds of things that dot this nine acre scientists were the largest just for so absolutely no space at the end and we were also concerned what we would find we started digging so you you've invested so much in this for so long we're waiting just days until

the world shows up what you want them to take away from this experience i want them to be awed inspired you look this thing is beautiful it's it's it's beautiful it's impactful from the moment you walk through the good source of the new building you know you're in someplace different because immediately you see the honoring of the past because we built this building all round a ruin of the original founders so what if you're a relatively recent arrival to america usually fill in the investment industry why the world you come to the american civil war because it was so you walk through the door and only would you potentially see people of your ancestral ethnic group but you would also immediately begin to understand just how much this particular conflict and its aftermath impacts american life you begin to recognize whether it's a

theology is whether it is the way sort of american culture to political and social culture involves you will see it it will be very apparent to anyone that wants to understand america when one is because of this conflict and let's not forget i'm in the american civil war was an attempt at a are saving thinking of an idea and that is inescapable christie coleman chief executive officer of the american public fb pics

land near the moon who mayor moon the or as christie said there the museum drew on the collisions of two previous institutions so the selection of artifacts and the context they were put in was a vital part of telling the story curator kathy wright showed backstory producer melissa does monday around the exhibition some of which was still being unpacked as you may hear so you're saying we're standing in the main guy yeah we've what we've just entered the main gallery and are standing in what's essentially the beginning of the war and so does this

particular area really is trying to get visitors a sense of the creation of the confederacy and both the united states of the confederacy ramping up for a form war and the first battles of the war so we have a large artifact display case on one side that explorers real people come and decisions that they made about which side to support and how they did that so we've really tried to choose people who are both for the union and for the confederacy and the way that the outbreak of war or really impacted their lives so for instance we have a southern woman and a northern man who were engaged in eating sixty any outbreak of war prevented them getting married for for a number of years she eventually takes about a truce and travels to new york city during the war and is finally able to marry it it took several years to court made that do we know what was it kind of a torturous decision for both of them it was a difficult decision and that day they seem to have been very much in love and they wanted to get married on and she

wanted her family to be present time says sheikh she was from virginia and they wrote letters to each other back and forth which then had to had to be delivered her about a truce along and she finally made the decision and was able to leave from norfolk virginia with her mother and traveled to new york and at sixty three hand and that's when they were finally married so we have a large portrait of her and we're going to exhibit some reproductions of the letters as well is that their marriage certificate is their story one that's new to the museum or if i had been asked say at the museum of the confederacy what i have heard their story there to you would not have heard their story before our we had her portrait on display on and in what was essentially a meeting room which was only used for various public meetings and programs and things about sort of there was no real explanation of who she was or were worried their lengthy drawn out romance and that separation so we're looking at the second

the media pieces which is going to be presented to visitors this is another approximately three minute long audio and video presentation what we really wanted to show within the space is the way that african americans have been sort of taking their own steps even before the war began to free themselves and the way that sort of the evolution of of emancipation and things like the emancipation proclamation influenced their decision about whether to fleece to union lines or whether to stay where they were so we've selected a number of stories on and quotations from from real people on to highlight the variety of decisions that people made we start out with a story that was told by a former slave of a young african american girl being in punished and then sold once mrs was sick and the slave girl named alice patterson water and something to eat lizards got sick to her stomach and she said alice was trying to poison her

she stripped down to her waist and lipstick how high alice was chained down by the arms and legs until she got well when she was carried off to richmond in chains and sold so we we start out with sort of the worst things which which could've happened to abe at a slave and then we move forward into the story of a man who chose to runaway he was a louisiana he hid in the swamps from from slave hunters preserved for several months and finally and finally made it to union lines where where he enlisted as a union soldier and served for the duration of the war one morning steve the overseer with for years now you can question

what happened to my family i had just human flu but turkeys chickens and pigs we slept on loans and bernstein perseveres to make smoking keep away mosquitoes twenty twenty we escaped to human mind or our joint companies see fifteenth regiment corps de a freak and we conclude with a quotation from a letter that was written by an african american woman in maryland which was not which which had slaves but as part of the union they were not fried as a result of the emancipation proclamation so she wrote a letter to abraham lincoln and mr president it is my desire to be free to go to see my people you will please let me know if we are free there's no record of any response to her

letter and she's writing during the war so we we know that the answer to that was the notion she she was not free and therefore had to wait for the thirteenth amendment to the past to meeting sixty five do we know what happened to a woman in the years after the war we do not know what happened to her what's i mean is that stories of her on you know now i'm thinking about why business media installation in and it's also next to it there's a giant color as frodo births you enslaved people picking cotton in a field how is this different from how the issue of slavery would have been represented at the museum of the confederacy one of the things which we really wanted to do in this new exhibition which would not have the opportunity to do before it was to focus on the african american experience to rout the exhibition an eye to really incorporate it and be that throughout the the overall narrative in a way that i think most most other exhibitions in including our own our own previously will talk about african americans as almost as a sideline and build your deck he's a

little mentions of them but they're they're not the main characters we wanted to make them one of the main characters and put there put their story and the story of the evolution of emancipation throughout the war and at the core of all of this we have lots of flags our collection and this is one of my favorites because of the story behind it and i think a lot of people on windy see confederate flag they have really strong feelings one way or another about it on that dislike and challenges a lot of those preconceptions it is just as a standard an army of northern virginia battle flag so it's not very recognizable your red background with white stars on a blue cross this particular flag was carried we think based on research by the forty nights north carolina infantry and it was carried during that the the petersburg campaign which was in petersburg virginia in each in sixty four at the battle of the crater passes famously where i am union and confederate troops had sort of been in a standoff in siege warfare and on union troops

had hit upon a plan to dig a tunnel underneath the confederate line of fortifications and to detonate a large amount of black power basically blow a hole in the confederate lines and then send in union troops said this happened i think it was july thirtieth eating sixty four when this was finally detonated and the resulting creator i became known as the battle of the creator and african american us colored troops were the first ones sent n and this really became just a complete just a complete scene of chaos and destruction for both sides it had confederate soldiers who were trapped in a lot of the church and the various debris from the explosion you had done now union troops are there going into that and a lot of really fierce hand to hand combat the flag of the forty nights north carolina was captured by us colored troops in this battle capturing a flag was an enormous honor for any soldier so as far as far as i know this is the only flag

that is recorded as being captured by the us colored troops the us army kept very careful records of who captured a flag because they were eligible for a medal of honor for this particular flag that we have have conserved and were really very excited to be able to to put it on on display and presented with the history of its association with the creator and with the colored troops it's an artifact that that they're really bridges both sides of the story and done as for shows how how the military situation had changed so dramatically by eating sixty four that you have black men in uniform where we're able to go when i perform actions that would make them eligible to receive medals of honor was this fight on display at the museum of the confederacy it was on display but it was it was kind of in the downstairs gallery that wasn't part of the cohesive exhibition was a sort of a stand alone and i am but it was one that we've been really excited to get concerned and i met really pleased to see a more

integrated and interwoven into the overall story of the war old one of the challenges with any exhibition on the civil war is you have to get a war started and you also have to end it and so the very final gallery of the exhibition focuses on post war period were not defying this and limiting it with any particular year but we do want to include a space with the three amendments to the us constitution which immediately followed the war so these were tremendous steps forward in in the united states and are all in and then switch which continue to be discussed and debated in and relevant today as as we talk about things like voting rights and citizenship on as as these rates were were given to african americans there were also a lot of white supremacists who were looking for ways to to re assert their authority and this is an aspect that we also want to not lose sight of as we talk about some of the progress that was made there's also this this this pushback so we do

talk about some some terror working as haitians such as the ku klux klan which were established you to reassert control by instilling fear and african americans as well as more legal and clinical means which were which were put forth to discourage african americans from voting so things like the poll tax which was soon adopted and in many states that basically made it financially impossible for the average poor person white or black to go to the polls how you illustrate that with items what sorts of items will be on display we're going to be exhibiting a poll tax receipts anyone who paid a poll tax was given every seat so maybe we have eighty degree production of one of those which will be used to help talk about voting rights the documents that were using two to illustrate african american civil rights is in marriage certificate the ability for black couples to be able to formally get

married and happy eight illegally recognize partnership was hugely important to many people so did a marriage certificate which which were exhibiting it was issued to a couple who had already been together as a couple for about twelve years they have several children together and they were enormously excited to be able to formally get married and to have this document which which which name them as man and wife and then you know you talked about there's did this official war ends but the violence doesn't stop for many african americans so how is this you know your job as a curator how do you convey that in a way where it sounds like it's a delicate balance you need to recognize the progress that's made but then as a curator also address the fact that in some cases in some towns african americans are still in danger many in many cases it's it's it's challenging to say that personally and professionally to realize that in many ways some of the

lessons of the war still haven't been learned today and that were still dealing with with some of this my hope for heifer history and the study of history and coming to museums is that it did in learning about the past that we can hope to learn from it and make better choices in the future and not go back and and repeat past mistakes on my hope that it teaches people to be more careful fingers i'm not only about things that happened in the past but in looking at issues today and very upsetting to in it just to see him in the news in the past week or so that you know there's still black churches being being targeted and burned so clearly they're still lessons which we haven't learned collectively but i hope that i am we could see the humanity and people can't and that the eu the enormous struggles that people have made in the past to claim african americans so many of them coming from from slavery and having almost nothing and giving up and in many cases what very little that they had and in order to become free for

themselves for their children that this still encourages us to continue to struggle and fight for what is right today curator at the american civil war museum to see images of some of the items cathy discuss to our website you are i mean the national park service issued a statement asking shops and at sites across the nation to stop selling the

confederate battle flag the decision came in the weeks after the shooting of nine worshipers at the historic emanuel and the church in charleston south carolina the shooter had posted photos online of himself posing with a confederate flag in front of confederate landmarks the statement that sparked a broader discussion of whether gift shops should sell any confederate memorabilia to find out how the gift shop at the new american civil war museum navigates the politics of these issues melissa went to the gift shop and spoke with stephanie arguing the director of education and programming at the museum so it's really interesting about the shops and museums is that they are a tool for extending a visitors' experience with us so we do think a lot about not only the business aspect of what can people buy what are they looking for how much are they willing to spend but also how the products that we have a match up really to how they're telling her stories that

either represent the stories that are telling their exhibits in their programs or hope to extend that winning experience so one thing that speaks to me that's very different but representative of our new institution is assured that we're sitting right next to that picture of frederick douglass on it but instead of just being a picture of frederick douglass its comes in a billiard stylized five colleges that looks very contemporary with the way that it steve's mind and that's something that it really excited about as a young adult because they were by this and we're at it looks cool it looks hip it also has it a picture of a person who stories people might not be as familiar with but we definitely wanted to make sure were well represented in the new institution tell me a little bit about the confederate imagery that will or will not be visible at the gift shop

we stopped carrying the army of tennessee confederate battle flag shortly after the events related to charleston in charlottesville of the day here we pulled it pretty quickly and start selling in the show on our web site we still carry some flags related to specific units but that traditional battle flag that's often seem tied to people who use it as a symbol of white supremacy we've had along institutional conversations about what that means and balance seen our ability to tell the story the confederacy because you can't tell the story of this of what about the confederacy with also that idea feeling like people should be able to honor their ancestors of that i want to but you don't like the things that were selling to be misappropriated this appropriated as symbols of hate so for the large flag of the army a tennis tennessee battle flag we

put that pretty quickly that's the one that people traditionally quinn when i say the confederate flag in twenty nineteen that's it's the army of tennessee yes that the one with the red field in the blue cross or exxon that that you see often associated with you know the rally in turnout in charlottesville we also that use that moment to think about where else has that flat on our products how could this be misappropriated for something he will and have thought very carefully about that especially when it comes to items that are cheap that by receiving your field trips where they're not really thinking about the full ramifications of what the purchased just really excited to have five or ten dollars for mom to spend on a gift shop somewhere on a field trip so we pulled small items that they might have had those battle flag from them and instead try to find some other products that kids would find interesting and useful and still fit that amount that they could

take with them on the filter so they could have that souvenir to take home but when the risk having a really messy history attached to that the what some products did you have to poll in addition to justify that the flag we pulled some small souvenir items like key chains shot glasses even small items of jewelry that had a confederate battle flag on it and that felt that lacked the context in new ones that we want to convey to people when they come and visit their sites so if something had a confederate battle flag on it but was soliciting text allies with race is about the civil war in an american flag or a can and things like that that is harder to misappropriate but for something that might have been a necklace or present that had a charm on it or just a key chain of that scene an army of tennessee battle flag on it we pulled those because that was just it was too risky for us we'd rather have somebody doing something that somebody could have a more nuanced conversation representation so can you give me an example of an

item here that kent displays boasts and now way that you're talking about so we're standing in front of the wall of shelves with coffee mugs and shot glasses and there's a coffee like here that looks like something you'd expect to find at a civil war a gift shop and it's got a confederate soldier on the horse holding a confederate battle flag and a us soldier next year cannon with the us flag that says the civil war in virginia and got the flag its contextualize by being with soldiers on the battlefield cannot be harder for this to be something that you have on a desk and you like moon this guy might have more nefarious intent or hetu intent as the something that says history this little wire and so we were okay with them and that's i'm so sharp glasses to woo woo and there's mugs with abraham lincoln i'm assuming at the museum of the confederacy gift shop what i've been able to buy a mug with

jefferson davis' son and we had found that had debts jefferson davis's face on it here and there but honestly most people when they say for buying a person an individual from the year representing the confederacy the person people most by its robert e lee probably fallen by stonewall jackson but you could find jefferson divas on some things but that's not what most people bought and when you're making these decisions and kind of talking about these things was it very much with the understanding that if you wanted the message of the museum to carry through in the kitchen yes it's absolutely true we want to make sure that folks katie explores this new or different interpretation of the civil war and then have something to take home and tell me a little bit about how you guys have tried to use even the purchase of butterfly someone's gonna buy as an opportunity to learn more about the history we have one of the

largest collections of seoul where flags in the country and we know a lot of really rich stories that go with those in the diversity of flat so they're out there especially when it came to individual unit's flag from those personal touches that they put on and we are excited to bring some of those flags to the public for sale well what we find really interesting is that sometimes we've had people come in and they say my ancestors fought for the confederacy for example and they'd like the one i find it to honor my ancestors and our staff has been trained to ask questions now all great who was your ancestor which you know did he fight and and start to narrow it down so instead of coming for just a confederate battle flag having a more nuanced conversation about the history itself and often connecting our visitors to a more historically accurate flag that also could be a less offensive to some people who might see that as a symbol of oppression

that's stephanie arguing with producer melissa just monday at the american civil war museums gift shop in richmond virginia so ed join you won't have the benefit of working on some of the most contentious fields in american history and i got ask you from your vantage point as you know you see people living in the twenty first century why are people still debating the civil war so much well one point and it's a minor one but i think it's a worthwhile is you know as historians i think any time that we're confronting the past there is a component of that that that feels real and vibrant that we have to reckon with but i think in a larger way for the

public you have the sort of ancient seeming wars like the revolution of the word at twelve i think people are very very far away and then you have what probably seemed to many people like four more recent wars that seem modern even world war one that certainly world war two that people have some way of reckoning with the sum or a sense of the kind of middle point that is the past and yet this is grounded in so many issues that are fundamentally still being reckoned with in the present that i think it's a tangled subject people to deal with young is precisely because of that tangle the contentiousness that i felt drawn to it like a moth to have resisted it for a long time because the snowboards associate you with sort of kitsch and also with the kind of you know vibrant buff them that seem sometimes to repel scalia understanding but i came to believe that for her standing on stage we had if you're walking today into the teeth of this and try to see if we could figure out for ourselves in

ways that we could explain to other people that's the the big challenge and often a point out that there's been a book a week written about the civil war since the civil war yes over fifty four thousand the law it has a ring to do my goodness so that's why i've devoted a lot about it when a savvy thing to do how can it be that we can know so much in understand so little for me that's been the interesting challenge about thing about this award the last couple of decades it seems that everybody has an opinion about it but those appears only seem to align with evidence or with what other people think so it's the place where the rubber really just wrote i think an historic understanding of this nation i mean the debate of those fifty four thousand volumes i'm sure has some bearing on military issue with the big questions i'm sure not about whether or not say well really shouldn't try to take an uphill

position over two days at gettysburg was in the navy the big arching debate that before is you can see you know of what's discouraging is that the issues of the day today are the same as they have been for generation after generation which is what caused the civil war and most recent polls the most recent polls i've seen show say that stage fright is what caused the civil war that is sorta blameless that people were fighting for what they thought was right and they were fighting for their rights but then people say will he was in states' rights but then below that it was also what people call economics and this somehow got an encoded in our thinking in the early twentieth century and refuses to go away which is that the civil war was a conflict between an industrial north and an agrarian south near this air tight around and speak people deserve so that's all really was right and it's like was agrarian me write it means if you're producing the

single most valuable commodity in the world with a perpetual bondage i guess that's agrarian it has a really good sell like you know a family farm which is a way that often comes out and the north has not really industrial this time in most of the soldiers fighting each other and so were reformers and those sides of this and then the question is why in the world would an industrial nation depend upon the agrarian half or to destroy so it there's so many evasions any lesions and just sort of willful refusal to look at the evidence of people simply don't want to acknowledge that slavery was this circuit at the heart of the nation they'd like to find something that they imagine let's everybody off the hook and it makes it so stark and in a literal credibility bloodless right always a political conflict only to economic conflicts know it's a human conflict and it's about humanity and so many different levels and that those

other sort of cold blooded ways of looking at it really remove the essence of the conflict itself yeah you know its destruction is like a museum exhibit where they've roped off all the dangerous parts right now don't go in there don't go under the slavery room because issues too scary to think about that you know i've wondered why can be that and this is not simply divided northerners and southerners disagreeing there's not really much difference in this forty percent of people who think it's the states' rights cause between the north and the southwest are pretty certain that is slavery that northerners and southerners today and young people i believe that as much as older people so it's not that we're making progress and expelling to be wow this is an iconic figure this out and one thing that occurs to me is that people who are cynical about the north from looking at it today find it hard to imagine that there was ever a time when there was enough moral purpose

in the united states to go to war to end slavery and of course they're right since right answer too and i'd be curious to know when you're out on the hustings and you talk about a book about a coming civil war how do you avoid going into these cul de sacs of explanation where there doesn't seem to be any way out of well i mean speaking as a really natural historian who sort of got sucked into the civil war of north texas but you know a lot of what i'm talking about is is the deeper roots of that later period so a lot of what i'm talking about is you know i mean it really does go back to the founding it really does go back to the riding into the constitution of slavery and the way in which the nation had to reckon with that and the many reasons why any team thirties that becomes more of an issue says so it isn't you know i do think i think a revolution in the civil war speaking as someone who's written about the revolution

people see them i think our fantasies are isolated bubble moments and of course then their meaning is wrapped up in the very fact that they aren't those kinds of moments and so i think for me i'm talking about the civil war and i'm always looking back deeper and deeper into the roots of where that comes from an end as a political historian i'm interested in seeing how that get sort of institutionalized how does it become so difficult to dig up those roots and that's the tricky thing those roots are deep and real and yet people on the very cusp of the war didn't believe that it could happen is that you have this kind of predictable events leading to the very concrete series of coincidences and events that bring on the war at the same time that we know that the origins lie deep in american past and so the trick is not to have to be altered in the stroller agrarian those roots are there on the other hand not to be well you know if he

hadn't tried to re supply for some further would have been a civil war there something that i hear all of the faithful so you did your question nathan you know as a historical problem it really does combine sort of in transit challenges of our discipline and a really concrete an unavoidable way because i have a question for you looking at it from the imperial distance of the of the twentieth and twenty first century's what does seem to matter to you as you tried to wrestle with the problems of your own period what what what does it matter that we get right about the savoy or as so i think there are extraordinarily powerful iconic objects and images and themes that come out of a nineteen century meat as as a twentieth century personally auspicious in that century your most of the way but hold until you know deferring to the nineties and few people as like the really wet historians write and by extension the landscape of memory around the nineteenth century is is almost just too powerful to ignore

and not have a certain kind of deference to and what i mean by that is you know and when i was coming up as a student at middle school or high school right emilio watching say that the ken burns documentary on the civil war widows and aesthetically beautiful rendering of the pass regardless of what you might think about that historical content or the narration or the music right there was something about that particular image of the past that was so romantic and i remember a plagiarized lines from love letters to like my girlfriend have designed especially for terrible terrible book combining that with you know the power of monuments around the country combined that with the kind of you know laura of object like say a saber behind the glass or even grow even say you know that the confederate battle flag in an image of massive resisters you know pushing back against school desegregation in the south regardless of the politics the image itself with historically powerful and so is injured person if you're part of my burden or challenge or unique obligation and

frankly is being able to wrestle with that afterlife of the civil war to figure out to what extent there are your fictions effects kind of mired in the way they were supposed to frame the events unfolding in the civil war shattered and that you know the emotion and them other ways in which contemporary meanings get invested in that event any teaching is a woman the civil war was not on my radar screen in any way it felt to me like a male thing even before was a story and it was a place where guys talk about battles it was a place that you know it was it was a male thing i didn't i don't think i had any perception that it was more than soldiers fighting and men talking about soldiers fighting the nuzzle it didn't even as i younger person make it and my sort of my radar of my understanding of american history it was just the violent middle part and i've said well you know it didn't feel like i was a part of well you know i should admit this but growing up as a white southerner i could have cared less about the civil war

you know partly because we were raised on tv shows and movies about world war two and so your ken burns and nathan was in many ways my battlefield my world more delicious if you and then i go to grad school in the wake of vietnam in which you and what you're talking about is that knowing was a gendered but it was also a generation to know we don't really talk about that military history stuff and so i rejected it for a long time but it's the very thing that nathan's talking about just recognizing the gravitational pull it exerts on everything else that happened before after really made me decided you had to do they say about ed talk about the artifacts nathan i think that's one reason the museum is especially volatile dangerous and important place to have these things if you re surveys americans' saying this can't hurt our feelings a little bit that they trust museums more than any other institutions to triple your past and it's something about the reality of the artifact you can argue yup

those of whispers and so you know it as christian or friends have now crafted american civil or a museum and they didn't have the largest collections of war artifacts in private hands in the world chemical use in the confederacy was so we have the things like you know the least it is there are very palpable hallowed eu orchestrate those to tell a story that is both a compelling because of its concrete manifestations but also has some of that grab a toss already know that they're not just the stuff on the battlefield might have one more sword but how do you make it till story that swept up the entire nation and the thing about art effects too is any artifacts they can have such a palpable power that that just as you're suggesting ed you don't always need words for that story to be told so you know for example i was just working on something and you are reckoning with how to talk about

slavery in early america actually in the caribbean so in the late eighteenth century and we decided that we would get shackles to put one of the first things you confront would would be this these shackles adult shackles and child shackles and there was a debate about how to present them in one person was talking about possibly what we're kind of label or what kind of words could explain them and we ultimately decided there would be no words because there's nothing more powerful then walking in and then being standing in front of that particularly these are these little chapel for a child you don't need words to tell that story that that's been a smack you in the face when you see it but this however i mean this is part of what for me has always been the fun about working with museums to such empowering things as sometimes can grab you at a level it is almost beyond words yells is using the struggles we had going over all the labels for this museum and knowing when to have no more than a hundred and fifty words to describe anything and realizing the power of every single

word to try to get it right at the same time recognizing that the average amount of time that someone stands in front of museum exhibit is twenty seconds and said how do you have this in a visceral power and yet it has to be absurd orchestrated into an emotional journey this museum the american civil war museum is very cautiously laid out to strike different motions a different times and recognizing that you basically can't feel that strongest emotion all the time and at how do you look at the exhibit about the treatment of the wounded and then at about the moment of emancipation and about the tactics on the battlefield how you weave those together in a way that makes sense so i'm glad we had museum professionals who have a lot better idea of how to do this and to some it deals with words knows but that's all for us today but please keep the conversation going online

let us know we thought of the episodes forecasters are questions about history whereas back story revealed that war or sending emails to backstory at virginia that ed you can also find us on facebook and twitter at backstory really special thanks this week to the studios bottom back stories produced at virginia humanities majors support provided by an anonymous donor the national down for the humanities gave the vice president and provost at the university new images of a robert ford no memorial foundation additional support forgot about the threat of cultivated fresh ideas and the arts and humanities in this episode was also produced with support from the dead each a falcon greeting him and his back story change the narrative of race and representation brian balogh is a professor of history at the university of virginia and is this professor of the humanities and president emeritus of the university of richmond john freeman is professor of history and american studies idea

jason connell is a bad strategy is associate professor of history at the johns hopkins university with back story was created by andrew windham to virginia's unity